


The Golden Dawn

by TwinkleHeartFudge



Series: The Golden Evergrande [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Almyra, Consciousness Transfer, Crossing Borders, Fix-It, M/M, Time Travel, Worldbuilding, no beta we die like Glenn, not like glenn will die though, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinkleHeartFudge/pseuds/TwinkleHeartFudge
Summary: There was a wall between him and his memories. It was like a play in which he was the main character but he is not the person. He is only the actor and he remembered the sensations and the emotions but they are diluted, and foggy and he tries to reach for it yet it feels like mist.He feels loss but not keenly, he feels the pain but only in short bursts and the faces that fill his heart with fondness also leave it cold and empty.He remembers a warm smile, and gentle, flustered blue eyes.(And the gaping chasm that was his heart when he saw him fall.)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Series: The Golden Evergrande [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673497
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	1. Of Beasts and Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> “Kyrosh” is a Persian name meaning ‘like the sun’, from Kyrios(Greek). It’s actually “Kourosh”, properly spelled, but I wanted to use the letter y instead. Update: Intsys just went and announced Claude’s actual name and I can now rest easy and stop agonizing over picking the right name for him, lol. His name is Khalid now. :D

_There was fire._

_The stench of blood, iron, steel and sawdust permeated the air nauseatingly. Smoke was billowing throughout the large field, embered ashes were being carried by the wind stung on Claude’s cheek._

_Claude could only remember screaming hoarsely and seeing Byleth, her hair a luminescent green beacon amid chaos and violence, standing amongst their fallen comrades. Her eyes were filled with heavy grief, with ringing anger. Beside her, Hilda had an axe in her hand, hope dawning on her eyes upon seeing him and the Almyran host. She manages to strike down several Agarthans as they targeted Marianne before being hit with a Nosferatu, the light leaving her eyes. Marianne rushed to her side in an attempt to heal her only for her head to be taken off in a clean slice of a cavalier’s sword._

_“Forward!” Claude roars in anguish, eyes filled with a helpless rage. It takes everything in him to stop his hands from shaking. “How dare they! **How dare they!** ”_

_He charges forward, raining death on the remaining loyalists to Edelgard’s cause. When he runs out of arrows, he snatches an axe from his fallen comrade, Freikugel protesting at his hand, and—_

There is a flash of steel and Claude instinctively, ( _silently, coldly, with a simmering rage he does not understand_ ) pulls a knife from under his pillow. He swipes his hands in a movement too fast for the eyes to follow, blade glinting dully in the moonlight. The assassin flinches as Claude manages to nick the vein in his throat. The man growls a low sound and pounces on him, a wickedly curved blade clanging against a tiny jeweled dagger. Claude didn’t have enough strength to parry, and the blade went through his guard and into his shoulder. Claude could feel electricity climbing his nerves from the wound, but he silences it with a small breath and gritted teeth. He adjusts his hold on his knife and hurls it into the chest of his struggling assailant. In one, two steps he closes their distance and he pushes the knife further in, with a grunt and an absent part of his mind noting that he had needed more force than he thought to slip the dagger into the spaces between the man’s ribs.

There is a splatter of blood on his cheek and a gurgling sound and the only sound left is his breathing.

( _This one does not think it would be in this moment that you would have been returned._ )

Claude does not know if he should be thankful for his dream. For it had awoken him and saved him from his death. The shadows under his eyes swell from a fatigue his young body doesn’t recognize, but his mind remembers all too well.

“ _Prince!_ ” A guard burst in frantically.

Claude can only look at the guard blankly, eyes hollow and haunted.

“You’re late.” Claude says dispassionately, eyes burning brightly in the dark room.

(He registers the look of horror on the guard’s face, and he feels a hysterical sort of laughter bubbling up his chest.)

His face is stained with drops of life blood and fingers soaked with _redredred_.

Then he lets go of the dagger and passes out.

When he comes to, it’s to his worried parents, lying on his bed ( _where he had just been about to die)_. Seeing no blood on the curtains on his bedframe ( _which he remembers was splattered red with his blood and the blood of his assassin)._ His eyes are bloodshot and face pale, his hands beset with a chronic trembling. His shoulder is also wrapped in itchy bloodstained bandages. There is a dull throbbing pain that makes his eyes water, but it is not the worst wound he has taken. _(His wyvern had been downed by a dark mage, with sinister eyes and sharp fingernails. He could, had? will have? feel the pestilence ravaging through his body through his heart his lungs his scream caught in his throat because he couldn’t breathe)_ He has not taken any wounds this bad as far as he remembers. He had burnt his skin before, gotten scratches and bruises from the other nobles who tells him he is a coward. Claude can only feel confusion and a feeling of loss.

“Maman? Papa?” He asks weakly, his throat scratchy. “I had the most terrible dream.”

Mother purses her lips and lets out a steady stream of breath. She does not say a word, only pulls him into a tight hug. She had never really been one for words.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Father asks him as gently as he can with his deep rumbling voice, and stern features. His lips are pressed into a tight line.

Claude doesn’t know where he gets the bravery he manages to muster up but his voice doesn’t shake.

He tells them of a nightmare, but only that there are shadows and bad people, and then steel and he just _moved_ without thinking, and _if he doesn’t die,_ **I** will and nothing past that.

“That is fine.” His father tells him, with startling compassion. “Khalid, you will start training with weapons tomorrow.”

Claude pauses slightly at the name and, _huh?_ His name _is_ Khalid but why doesn’t the name register properly to his mind? It feels like a name that he hasn’t heard for many years, but it _feels_ right. Why was he referring to himself as _Claude_ then? Why is it that when he hears his _own_ name, he feels a warmth radiating from his chest that he doesn’t, _no longer_ , recognize.

How _unusual_.

“Khalid?”

“Yes, papa?”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Papa asks awkwardly and is swatted by Maman, who gives Papa a mean look. Claude manages a wobbly grin.

And ah, Clau—no—Khalid’s brain buffers slightly and _ah_ , he realizes. “That was my first kill.”

It didn’t feel like it at all. Not with _fire, ashes and screams_ still echoing loudly in his ears, flashes of fire and magic that pass behind his eyelids. His blood singing an unknown song that he could feel but not hear. The memories are still flashing— _Memories?_ Is that what these are? These fragmented images of fire and slaughter? Of a large axe wielded by a _redredredred_ figure? Of dark indescribable creatures with enough cruelty to topple a nation? He could feel his body getting hotter and his pulse _skyrocketing_ , then the pain in his shoulder subsides slowly until there is no more pain. The blood seems to calm as fast as it came. Neither of his parents seem to register the change, they look at him worriedly but not much beyond that.

“—s it was.” Cla—Khalid’s registers. Oh, they had been saying something. He’d missed it.

( _Tell them, tell them._ )

What does he tell them?

He does not know.

“Would you like to sleep beside us tonight, Khalid?” Maman asks, eyes not leaving Khalid at all.

Khalid, Claude, or whoever he is right now, shakes his head and instead asks hopefully, “May I ride a wyvern tonight instead?”

Papa looks proud but still concerned. “You have a shoulder wound, my son. I do not recommend you ride. It might worsen your injury.”

Khalid pulls away from his mother’s embrace and without so much as a warning, and to alarmed voices, he tugs at the bandages. He lets it fall in one swift movement. There sits nothing on his shoulder but unblemished skin.

Maman moves her hand to the shoulder, not touching but hovering over where the wound had been, and takes in a fortifying breath. “You… I had not expected… it had been so rare recently that I hadn’t even considered that you would get it.”

“Is this the gift of your blood, _azizam?_ ” Papa asks curiously. “You have only told me of it in passing.”

“It is the gift of my blood, yet it is special even within my family.” Maman says quietly. “This may not leave these four walls, _omr-am._ ”

Papa only nods.

“Papa. May I ride tonight?” Khalid speaks up.

Papa regards him quietly. “You will ride with me. I will take you to the sea.”

( _Tell them. You trust them so wholly with your life. Tell them, sweet child of the verdant wind.)_

He wants to.

Yet he does not know what to tell them at all.

=

The night breeze was cold, ( _but no colder than Fhirdiad had been)_ and the stars were loud, a shining cosmos of constellations. They were twinkling. _Dancing_. Claude sees them and recognizes the summer sky. The waning crescent moon only looking like a clipped toenail in this bright night. ( _was it not spring? He remembers the first harvest like it was yesterday.)_ This scenery and the gentle cascade of waves calms him. The consistent flapping of the scaled reptile’s wings was familiar and _safe._ They were gliding through the air, a peaceful ride instead of the frantic memories he squashes under his boot.

The scent of Almyran pine and spices was _home_ , and the warmth of his father behind him told him that he will be fine.

He wishes to tell them, but he does not know _what_ to tell them. It eats at his heart. It is on the tip of his tongue but it does not come.

( _It will.)_

It will?

( _This one needs to put in a little more effort._ )

Alright.

If the voice in his heart tells him so, then,

_I’ll trust you._

=

As he falls asleep, surrounded by his parents’ warmth, he thinks.

That voice had been Byleth’s.

_Who was Byleth?_

It had been Byleth, but the wording, the tenses and the cadence of the words were entirely different. It was like to talking to that old lady in the monastery that didn’t manage to change her speech along with the times. Only, even _older_ than that. It sounded like those Ancient texts Seteth had confiscated from the library. Texts that he had painstakingly cross referenced to even just understand the language, their colloquialisms and metaphors.

_Seteth? He does not know a Seteth._

He had to—

_He had to what?_

It’s only for the second time he wakes up that he remembers everything.


	2. Notice: Outline Uploaded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've uploaded the Outline for this since I've lost my muse for this story. See next part of series :)

I've uploaded the Outline for this since I've lost my muse for this story. See next part of series :)

**Author's Note:**

> Pff, alright. I have a pretty rough outline of how I want to proceed with this, but we'll see.


End file.
